Francisco Umbral

Francisco Umbral(Francisco Pérez Martínez),
(born May 11, 1935 , Madrid, Spain—died Aug. 28, 2007, Madrid), Spanish writer who was known for his incisive wit and use of both classical language and contemporary slang in work that included magazine essays, newspaper columns, and more than 80 books. Umbral was almost entirely self-educated. He began his career in 1958 as a journalist for the Valladolid newspaper El Norte de Castilla. He went on to write columns for, among others, El País,Diario 16, and, from 1989, El Mundo, for which he produced “Los placers y los días,” a column of acerbic social criticism. Umbral’s books included Las ninfas (1975), Mortal y rosa (1975), La noche que llegué al Café Gijón (1977), and Trilogía de Madrid (1984). Umbral won numerous awards, notably the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 1996 and the Cervantes Prize in 2000.